NOTE: First portion of interview recording is missing. Remainder of the recording is synchronized with the transcript starting at question 16.

Strategic Modernization

Interviewer:

I WILL BEGIN BY ASKING YOU TO COMMENT ON -- I
THINK THOSE WHO WERE OUTSIDE OF THE GOT A SENSE IN THAT REALLY A CRUSADE HAD COME TO WASHINGTON.
THAT BIG CHANGES HAD TO BE MADE IN THE AREA OF STRATEGIC WEAPONS -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- MAYBE
SURROUNDING THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED STRATEGIC MODERNIZATION PROGRAM.

McFarlane:

Well, the basic -- (Tape Cuts Off) -- of our
strength was consequence of the President's judgment that until we restored this foundation of
deterrence, that the Soviet Union would continue to test wherever possible, and as they had in
the late '70s, continued to expand from Angola to Ethiopia and Nicaragua and places like that.
And the basic character of our renewed strength had to span the entire spectrum, from strategic
nuclear forces to soldiers and so forth. The President was left personally preoccupied with the
kid of hardware that was chosen, which he left to his Cabinet officers and the Defense
Department -- than to assuring that it would be as good or better than what the Soviet Union
had. So, revolution for the President was one of stemming the tide of Leninist expansion, less
so one of being an advocate of a particular kind of hardware. In my mind the renewal of our
strength had to be first and foremostly in the traditional kinds of weapons, submarines, land
based missiles, bombers. But it seemed to me that after we had restored those -- call it
traditional -- underpinnings -- that we needed to find a way to compete with the Soviet Union to
deter them -- that struck our comparative advantage. We had been playing the game, building
missile for missile, submarine for submarine on their rules really, in a competition that they
were bound to win it seemed to me. Because they could turn out land based missiles without the
restraint of a Congress and a concerned public that we had to face. And to me our own advantage
in high technology was the natural domain into which we ought to put most of our resources.
That's why -- especially when we began to see in 1982 -- that the new Russian missile, the
SS-24, was to be a missile that would be mobile, with multiple warheads -- would pose a problem
that we really couldn't deal with; that is, we couldn't count it from the sky as we always had
other systems. We couldn't find it and, therefore, we couldn't know if they were cheating or
not. So, we needed to find a new way to deal with it and I was very drawn to finding that answer
in high technology and that really was what in my own mind -- was the genesis of the SDI
program. But I emphasize that it was designed first and foremostly, in my mind, to deal with a
military problem; that is, to counter the SS-24 which was something we really couldn't deal with
any other way.

Interviewer:

PART OF WHAT YOU ARE DESCRIBING, THE WINDOW OF
VULNERABILITY, DOES -- COULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT TERM TO US.

McFarlane:

Well, the notion grew up in the late '70s that
we should never allow our President to be put in a condition where he didn't have any credible
options for dealing with the Soviet threat. Well, what that means is -- or what it meant to
devotees at the time was that if the Russians ever became able to destroy our missiles, the only
missiles that were capable of hitting a fixed point target accurate enough to deal with Soviet
missiles, then that would be intolerable. Intolerable, because it would leave the President with
no credible options. He would have options. That is, he could send all of our submarine missiles
back at the Russian people -- people. But, in the mind of these theoreticians, for our President
to have no other option than to destroy society and to expect that our own would also be
destroyed is not credible for a Western Judeo-Christian leader. Therefore, we have to find a way
to restore the survivability of our counter military missiles or land based missiles and that's
what we've been trying to do for over ten years now.

Interviewer:

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) ADMINISTRATION '81-'82, IN
ADDITION TO THE STRATEGIC MODERNIZATION PROGRAM, THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) --
USE OF NEGATIVE RHETORIC AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION -- I MEAN, POLITICALLY SPEAKING, OR SPEAKING
IN THAT KIND OF GENERAL SENSE, WHAT WAS THE MOOD THEN? WAS THERE A SENSE THAT WE WERE BUILDING
UP?

McFarlane:

I think the President's rhetoric in '81 and
'82 and beyond was very sharp, shrill, toward the Soviet Union -- was strategic in the sense
that he believed that it was possible to deal with the Soviet Union. But before you could do it
or should do it, he wanted to have the country behind him -- behind him in the sense of their
having a realistic understanding of Russians, of the Soviet government. To establish that
realistic understanding, he thought it necessary to put two or three or four years into -- in
filling this rather sober appreciation of a country whose government has expanded at the rate of
about one Vermont every year for the last 200 years. So, he used some very extreme language in
the first term not so much to express his eternal enmity as it was to elevate the public view of
the Soviets to a more realistic level. Because he thought then that in a second term, now, in
fact, that that would form a better background of support for actually reaching out to and
dealing with the Soviets.

Interviewer:

-- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- FOR THE PRESIDENT
INITIALLY. AND HE CAME IN ON A GROUND SWELL OF SUPPORT AND PART OF THAT SUPPORT WAS FOR HIS
FOREIGN MILITARY BUILD-UP. PEOPLE WERE WORRIED AND WANTED THAT. APPARENTLY, AT THE SAME TIME
THAT WAS HAPPENING, THERE WAS ANOTHER STRAIN GOING ON IN THE COUNTRY THAT'S REPRESENTED BY THE
NUCLEAR FREEZE MOVEMENT, WHICH -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- BUT IS GIVEN SOME KIND OF IMPETUS AND
STRENGTH, I THINK, UNDER -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) --

McFarlane:

Well, it was quite a substantial concern. It's
immediate impact on the Administration's program was to defeat the centerpiece of the strategic
modernization, the MX. And dating from the Spring of '82, we -- I realized that we had to devote
much greater effort to a public information program to try to inform Americans about the truth
of the fact that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle and you're simply not going to be able
to un-invent it. And, so, we convened the experts in public affairs and promotions from the
State Department and Defense and... and elsewhere and began in the Fall of '82 to
require that every deputy assistant secretary and above go to one of the 14 major media markets
in the country and spend at least four days. In which time, they had to participate in a talk
show, meet with the editorial board of a newspaper, spend a day on a campus some place and also
meet with the combined civic clubs, so as to reach as many people as you could with the truth
about what really could be done to alter the strategic balance of the nuclear age. And I believe
that it was successful to an extent and, yet, there was a larger problem here. And for me that
problem was not only that there was a community of people against nuclear weapons, but that no
one of any size or number in our country really has ever had a grasp of the fundamental concept
behind nuclear deterrence. And that it seemed to me that until the government, this one, and all
its predecessors and all the future ones, began to deal seriously with the American people about
why deterrence works and why it can be effective -- that we deserve this freeze movement. And if
we're going to sustain the policy, you had to take it to the grassroots. I still think that's
true. And it hasn't really been done yet.

Interviewer:

THE PRESIDENT BEGAN IN '82, I BELIEVE, AT
EUREKA -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- MADE A SPEECH AT EUREKA COLLEGE. HE BEGINS TO TALK ABOUT STRATEGIC
REDUCTIONS. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT SPEECH A LITTLE BIT, OR MAYBE ANY ONE OF THOSE SPEECHES.
WAS THAT PART OF YOUR -- THE STRATEGY YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?

McFarlane:

Yes, although the President believed that
arms control had been misguided in the past -- is well-known. It predated Eureka. But at Eureka,
it had been stimulated further by the freeze movement and he believed that his own proposition
about reductions instead of using arms control to simply control the speed at which they grew --
would be appealing to the freeze community. And I think that it was. But at the bottom, you have
to give him credit for an idea that was sensible and that is reductions make sense as long as
you reduce the right systems. And he had a concept behind the reductions that would make sure
that they improved stability.

Interviewer:

THERE WAS A MEASURE MAYBE -- AT LEAST TO MY
EYES -- THE CONCERN THAT THE PRESIDENT MUST HAVE FELT ABOUT THE FREEZE WHEN HE -- (TAPE CUTS
OFF) -- THE ACCUSATION THAT THE FREEZE MOVEMENT WAS INFLUENCED -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- CONSIDERED
POSITION. WAS THERE ANY -- I MEAN, HE DROPPED THAT AGAIN PRETTY QUICKLY. BUT THERE WAS A FEW
SPEECHES -- THERE WERE A FEW PRESS CONFERENCES WHERE HE RETURNED TO THAT THEME.

McFarlane:

Well, I think, the President, like many
people, is given to promoting an idea that reinforces his own point of view. His instincts
concerning welfare and its abuses lead him to focus upon stories that may not always be quite
true, but seem to personify the issue well. In this case, he had heard about an example of the
Soviet Union funding a movement in a foreign country that had connections with one of the
movements in our country. And, thus, the linkage to -- although indirectly -- Soviet support was
one that I think he probably magnified in his own mind, but it did serve the purpose of saying
that the interest of the Soviet Union happens to be the same as the interest of this
group.

SDI

Well, I think the genesis of the speech was
in the Fall of 1982, when Admiral Poindexter and I began to talk to each other about this new
military problem that the Soviet Union posed with the mobile multi-warhead missile, a missile
that we couldn't counter in the traditional way, that is by building one of our own like it or
in the same numbers. And the reason we couldn't was because Americans would have gotten tired of
the ideas of having ballistic missiles in your backyard or close by. And the more we thought
about it, the more it seemed to us that if you have an imbalance, with the Russians here and the
United States here. And through arms control, you're not able to get them to reduce. And because
of the U.S. Congress and the American people, you can't get our side to build up, then the only
you can restore that balance or compensate for this difference is to be able to intercept or
prevent this number of warheads from reaching our side; that is, to use defense. And so, we
began to ask questions of the scientific community, since this is quite an old issue -- and 15
years ago when I was in government, the question had been asked, can we do this, can we defend
against ballistic missiles, the answer was no, the state of the art really won't make it
possible. So, we asked the question again and in the late Fall and Winter of '82 and '83, we
began to get answers, well, yes, there have been substantial breakthroughs, notably in your
computers that would have enabled you to compute the trajectories of thousands of missiles in
very little time and to determine interceptor courses and to guide systems to intercept them.
And, so, we began to talk to the President about the idea and to encourage him to request the
military to comment both upon the technological risk, the cost and their own judgments about the
military applications. So, the President was very enthused about it. He had, of course, been
approached on the issue before ever coming to the White House by Edward Teller and others from
California. So, he had a very receptive view of it and he invited the Chiefs -- the Joint Chiefs
-- over to the White House in January of '83. And the Chiefs, who were giving the beginning of
the year summary of what they though we should be spending money for the following year, went
through several things. And Admiral Watkins then pointed out that he thought it timely to being
to investigate the -- our capacity to protect or defend against ballistic missiles. And that he
believed the scientific and technological realities would make possible such a defense and that
we would have to rely or might be able to rely less upon as many nuclear weapons as we had. And
I interrupted him at that point to make sure that the point was made and that everyone grasped
it and I said "Are you really saying that you believe that it may be possible for us to shift
away from exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons toward less reliance and ultimately to rely more
on defense, so that nuclear weapons might have a lesser role. Are you saying that?" He said
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." And the President began to be much more attentive to the
issue and I said, "Well, let's be very clear here. Do others in the military agree?" He went to
the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Army Chief of Staff and General Vessey, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, and I asked each in turn, "Do you agree with that?" And each one in turn said "Yes
I do." And I said "Mr. President, I'm sure you understand the significance of what's being said
here and that it that there may be --" So, I said, "Mr. President, do you understand that the
Chiefs are saying that the technology may be at hand, which will allow us to rely less on
nuclear weapons and perhaps some day defend against their arrival in the United States?" By that
time the President was very much on top of the point and he said, "Yes, and I would like the
Chiefs to define that further, tell me what the risks are in terms of technological risks and
the other problems that attend integrating that kind of defense into our military force
structure and do it promptly." So, after that meeting, I drafted a directive which he signed
that requested that they report back, I think, within a month and they did and it basically
said, yes, there is a sound basis for investing in this. And while the Chiefs said that,
anticipating that the studies would require several weeks and months that would precede a
decision to commit to a program, the President recognized once you allow something to be
studied, especially when the budget is already being devoted to things that have their
constituency throughout the Pentagon -- that to introduce something new, especially an expensive
new item, may very well sink into the sand, simply because it has no constituency. Well -- so,
he said, "Look, let's get this before the public to give them a basis for hope that maybe there
is an alternative some day to exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons. And I want to do it right
away." So, I thought right away might be at least three or four months, but as it turned out in
a little more than six weeks, he wanted to make the speech and he didn't want anyone involved
other than carefully selected scientists, until the announcement was made. So, the NSC staff did
all of the work on it. We edited it with a carefully chosen group of scientists and engineers
who did validate the basic legitimacy of asking the question and finding the answer. And the
President determined to go ahead with it on the 23rd and so it was inspired by concern over a
military problem -- but also the President's rather moral motive of trying to find out if there
is an alternative to weapons of mass destruction.

Interviewer:

YOU WERE AWARE AND THEY WERE, OF COURSE,
AWARE THAT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A VERY CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL TO MAKE. IT HAD BEEN LAUNCHED
BEFORE -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- YOU WERE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THIS WAS CONTROVERSIAL.

McFarlane:

Oh, yes. There's no question about it. It had
been controversial in the late '60s when the ABM debate had only carried the US Senate by one
vote, I think.

Interviewer:

IT SEEMS TO ME LOOKING BACK -- (TAPE CUTS
OFF) -- SPEECH -- MAKES WHAT MAY BE EXAGGERATED CLAIMS. I DON'T KNOW. HISTORY WILL TELL. BUT
USES THE LANGUAGE IN THE SPEECH, "I WANT TO RENDER NUCLEAR WEAPONS OBSOLETE," -- (TAPE CUTS OFF)
-- "YOU JUST WANT TO FREEZE THEM. I WANT TO RENDER THEM OBSOLETE." WAS THERE ANY POLITICAL
CONSIDERATION GIVEN -- AND, OF COURSE, THIS TAKES PLACE AT A TIME WHEN THE FREEZE RESOLUTION WAS
ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE. WERE THERE POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN TERMS OF THE NUCLEAR FREEZE
MOVEMENT, IN TERMS OF THE TIMING OF THE MARCH 23RD, TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE?

McFarlane:

Well, there wasn't on my part and I don't
think there was on the President's. But I would admit at the same time that in order to succeed
in getting the President to give a speech on any subject -- that it has to be (unintelligible)
and approved by and supported by those who care about politics and public affairs and imagery
and things like that. So I don't pretend that the speech would ever have been given if Jim
Baker, Mike Deaver, Ed Meese and others had not supported the idea. And, yes, they did. And I
believe probably that Jim and Mike in particular probably saw the pressure from the freeze
movement and this was a way to undermine some of their arguments.

Interviewer:

IN TERMS OF THE CONTENT -- I KNOW IN
HINDSIGHT THAT -- A LOT OF PEOPLE I TALKED TO WHO ARE STRONGER SUPPORTERS OF SDI WILL LOOK AT
THE SPEECH AND POINT OUT CLEARLY THAT THIS DOES NOT CALL FOR SUCH A COMPREHENSIVE DEFENSE AS
PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK IT DID AT THE TIME. NONETHELESS, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE SPEECH, IT DOES SEEM
TO CALL -- IT DOES SEEM TO HOLD OUT THE POSSIBILITY THAT EVENTUALLY WE WOULD FIND SOME WAY OF
REALLY PROVIDING AN UMBRELLA DEFENSE FOR ALL OF US, CIVILIANS AS WELL AS MILITARY INSTALLATIONS.
YOU -- IN THAT REGARD, DO YOU HAVE A COMMENT TO MAKE ABOUT THE SPEECH?

McFarlane:

Oh, I think you're quite right, that the
speech gave us the cast of a crusade. A crusade to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of
the earth. And in that sense, it was surely overselling the product. Certainly anything that was
in the mind's eye of me or anyone else -- I believed -- I believe now that one can imagine the
day when technology could enable us to so complicate an attack for the Soviet Union that they
would choose not to attack at all. But that's quite different from saying that you can build a
foolproof system and I don't believe that you can. But the President is a man who when seized
with an idea does have a tendency to introduce a romantic element; that is, that the power of an
idea can overcome the obstacles before it and often lose -- used to lose sight of some real
problems. Not least that once an idea has occurred, in the case of nuclear weapons, that lot of
people can build nuclear weapons, and you simply cannot put them back in the bottle. The same
thing with other weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons in World War I. Well, they
are still around. We have not been able to get rid of them for as an intelligent human being can
read a book in the ninth or tenth grade and learn how to build these things -- that's probably
unrealistic. On the other hand, you may come across new technologies that will make it imprudent
to use those weapons and that's what we're really talking about.

Soviet-American Negotiations

Interviewer:

LET ME MOVE ON TO THE 83 AND -- (TAPE CUTS
OFF) -- OVERALL COMMENT ON THAT VERY VERY LOW POINT OF AMERICAN-SOVIET RELATIONS. WERE WE -- WAS
THE ADMINISTRATION SATISFIED? DID THEY SEE IT AS A TEMPORARY PHENOMENON?

McFarlane:

Well, I would put this trend of decline --
and you're quite right about it -- into the context of Soviet practice historically. That is
that they have tended under Stalin or Khrushchev or Brezhnev to promote a certain strategy and
to do so until there is -- demonstrably failing -- but not to change once they have set off on a
particular course. Well, in the late '70s, I believe, honestly, that they saw the United States
as a country in decline. A country also that could be intimidated by threats or the use of
force. They had seen us lose a war. They had our economy get into a very perilous state. They'd
seen us allow our own military balance to shift very much against us. So, they saw all these
fundamental elements of a society that had lost its way. And the strategy they adopted, for
accelerating that decline, even after President Reagan was elected, was to intimidate, to shout,
to walk out of talks, to posture, believing that even though this election of 1980 seemed to
indicate some wish on the part of the American people to reverse course -- believing that
ultimately our decline being inevitable -- would only lead to momentary lapses in this trend.
And, so, for the first three or four years, they continued the same strategy. But by the time
the end of 83 came and we began to have very concrete evidence of success in stemming the tide,
such as our ability in Europe to deploy the INF missiles and the success with the U.S. Congress
in getting three straight years of enormous investment in defense and a willingness to go into
Grenada and to succeed dramatically in a military incursion, all of these were evidence of a
country that was not in decline. But that had begun to rally and pull its socks up. So, at that
point, I believe that even had Brezhnev not passed from the scene, that there would have been a
serious reconsideration in the Soviet Union of whether or not their policy was working. And I
think there was.

Interviewer:

LET ME GO BACK AND ASK YOU FOR A BRIEF
COMMENT ON THREE LITTLE SPECIFIC THINGS THAT YOU MENTIONED -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) --

McFarlane:

Well, at the time I was in the Middle East --
when the Soviet Union shot the KAL down -- but it seemed to me an example of the left hand not
knowing what the right hand was doing. Although, left and right would have probably pursued the
same course had they known. It was a stupid thing to do. Stupid in terms of their own
self-interest. For it was bound to have legitimized President Reagan's criticism of them in this
country and among allies and to have reinforced our position. But it seemed to me at the time,
from Beirut, that the Soviet Union had given us a windfall that could only help us improve the
coherence of the NATO Alliance and our own efforts with the Congress to sustain the defense
build-up.

Interviewer:

ANY COMMENT ON THE SOVIET WALK-OUT OF THE
START TALKS?

McFarlane:

Well, again, this was the last ditch effort
to vindicate their strategy of intimidation and they did it in the belief that the West would
become so frightened by this preemptory behavior that the continuation of the deployment would
cease and that the American people would rise up against the President for allowing the arms
control talks to break down. It didn't happen that way at all. Perhaps because our economy was
getting better. By 1984, the American people were feeling that things were better than they had
been four years before. And the spin-off, vis-à-vis the Russians, was Reagan must be right.
Things are better. It is "Morning in America." And so the Soviets had to reckon with the fact
that all of their posturing and intimidation hadn't worked either on the alliance or the
American people and as it turned out Reagan was elected by, whatever, 49 states.

Interviewer:

THERE WAS, HOWEVER, ONE SMALL -- WAS THERE
NOT -- BUT IN '84, MOVING TOWARD THE ELECTION -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- THE PRESIDENT BEGINS IN A
MUCH MORE SYSTEMATIC WAY, I THINK, UP TO THAT POINT TO BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT ARMS CONTROL
AGREEMENTS WITH THE SOVIET UNION. IN THE SUMMER OF '84, I THINK HE MEETS WITH GROMYKO AND EVEN
-- THERE'S SOME SUGGESTIONS THAT A SUMMIT MAY BE COMING UP. AND PART OF THE REASON FOR THAT,
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WOULD HAVE, IS THAT THE PRESIDENT'S POLLSTERS FIND HIM VULNERABLE TO THE
DEMOCRATS ONLY ON THE ISSUE OF PEACE, BY WHICH I THINK THEY MEAN ARMS CONTROL TALKS OF SOME
KIND. BECAUSE BOTH CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE SEEM ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THE MILITARY BUILD-UP, BUT
CONGRESS AND MANY PEOPLE SEEMED CONCERNED THAT WE AREN'T TALKING.

McFarlane:

Well, I think that's a plausible point of
view, but the truth behind why the President began to be more interested in engaging the Soviet
Union in a dialogue was that from the beginning, he thought that the United States had a
responsibility to establish a framework, a set of ground rules for dealing with the Soviets that
could lead to a stable peace and unless we could do that, we wouldn't be able to hold together
the alliance of industrial democracies nor to continue the trend of the late -- of the early
1980s toward democracy both in the developing countries of Latin America and beyond. But he
believed that the first term had to be devoted to getting ready for those negotiations. But the
reason why, starting in late '83, and in his speech, I believe, of January of 1984 -- where he
laid out the basis for talking with the Soviet Union. That is, realism, strength and dialogue.
That was given because he believed that in the previous three years we had established that
foundation of strength, to be able to bargain in a way that we could win. That we had restored
the strength of our alliance, that we had demonstrated in Grenada a will to confront and that
all of these together ought to have had an impression in the Soviet Union that we could not be
intimidated, so the time was right. But I don't think it was so much a reaction to public
opinion. This had been Reagan's strategy form the beginning.

Interviewer:

YOU KNOW, IT'S INTERESTING. YOU GIVE AN
INTENTIONALITY (?) TO THESE EIGHT YEARS THAT I REALLY HADN'T THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE, THE FACT THAT
THE AGREEMENT SIGNED VERY RECENTLY AND POSSIBLY THE START AGREEMENT WERE IN THE PRESIDENT'S MIND
FROM THE BEGINNING. WITH THAT IN MIND, LET ME ASK YOU A BROAD QUESTION, BECAUSE THE SENSE YOU
HAVE FROM LOOKING AT IT FROM THE OUTSIDE IS THAT HERE'S A GUY WHO COMES INTO OFFICE, DOESN'T
WANT TO TALK, WANTS TO BUILD UP, STRONG SUPPORT FROM A VERY CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY IN
AMERICA. BY THE END OF THE EIGHT YEARS, THAT CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY FALLS AWAY AND HE LEAVES
PUBLIC OFFICE AND HE GETS CO-OPTED BY THE CENTRIST REPUBLIC PARTY, BEGINS TO MAKE AN AGREEMENT,
ALMOST AS IF AN UNWILLING PERSON IS DRAGGED TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE. YOU'RE GIVING QUITE A
DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION.

McFarlane:

Yes, I think President Reagan realized that
the United States is a romantic society basically. We are a people that believe in the
perfectibility of human kind. We have a very primitive understanding of Leninist doctrine and as
a consequence, we can assume that Brezhnev is as potentially right minded as Ronald Reagan. It's
a silly notion, but it is real. And the President recognized that the best you can hope for in
this country is to be able to negotiate on good terms where you have the strength and you can
avoid losing, but you can't pretend that you won't negotiate at all. That's just not a feasible
course of action in the United States. Negotiation has seemed to be the way in which you
influence the Soviet leadership to come to its natural condition, which is peace. A silly
notion. But it is a political reality in this country that one can only minimize the damage of
dealing with by doing it from strength and that's what the President did.

Interviewer:

-- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- IT DOES LOOK FROM THE
OUTSIDE THAT HE'S KIND OF BEING -- I MEAN, ARE THEY DISILLUSIONED, IS IT JUST THE NATURAL
WINDING DOWN AT THE END OF HIS ADMINISTRATION AS PEOPLE GO OUT AND SEEK TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN
PERSONAL CAREERS? IS IT COINCIDENCE? IS IT --

McFarlane:

Well, I think the
departure of some of the more conservative Cabinet members is understandable in the context of
their awakening to the President's long-term strategy. And that is that -- in the case of Cap
Weinberger -- Cap came to understand, I think, that President Reagan really did want an
accommodation with the Soviet Union. The President believed he could do it on terms that
protected our national interest. I think Cap disagreed with that, but I think he was probably
the most loyal Cabinet officer in the Cabinet and, thus, he didn't want to be a part of being in
the way of something his President wanted. But he didn't believe he could personally endorse it,
so he left. It was a position of integrity that I respect.

Interviewer:

AS A MAJOR STUMBLING
BLOCK IN WHAT APPEARED TO BE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR BIG AGREEMENTS --

McFarlane:

Well, I think first
of all we recall that in 1983, in the Fall, the Soviet Union walked out of arms control talks
and took a very belligerent stand. Versus today, in 1987, '88 or '89, where we're talking about
reducing the level of nuclear weapons and already have one treaty that does. We began to see SDI
in its true context but its context of value has been leveraged. The prospects viewed from the
Kremlin of the United States investing heavily in something they know we are better at than they
is so coercive that it leads them to make concessions they wouldn't normally make. And it has
given us an INF treaty. It has kept them at the table on START and producing what I think is a
good outcome there involving reductions for the first time in the post war period. But SDI, far
from being an obstacle, in hindsight, we can see is probably the ultimate negotiating leverage
we've ever had!

Interviewer:

YOU'RE NOT SUGGESTING
ARE YOU, THAT IT IS ONLY LEVERAGE. DO YOU THINK THE PRESIDENT MIGHT ABANDON AN AGGRESSIVE
PURSUIT -- I MEAN, SDI, THE STRATEGIES HAVE- I MEAN, THAT'S NOT GOING TO GO AWAY. WE'RE GOING TO
KEEP RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, BUT WOULD HE ABANDON AN AGGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF SDI IN EXCHANGE
FOR A START AGREEMENT?

McFarlane:

Well I'll answer this
in a hypothetical sense, that I believe will prove real. You see, the casting of the question
"Is SDI leverage?" or is it "a real system?" Is to misunderstand the issue. SDI was conceived,
in my mind, as a way to deal with a military problem posed by a military piece of hardware. Now,
if you get rid of that military piece of hardware that worries you, then you have no need, or
less need surely, for SDI. Now that is not exactly to say that SDI has been a bargaining chip.
It has been something that you are willing to put into the field to deal with a piece of
hardware on the other side. If the hardware goes away, then you don't need it. I suppose that's
a bargaining chip but it isn't something we would have given up for anything else. Now whether
the President sees it the same way, we'll know by the time this airs. But in my judgment, it
will be to his credit that he served throughout his stewardship, never having given it away
until, he could see, clearly that, the system it was designed to deal with was no longer going
to be a problem. Now that can be achieved by doing away from that -- doing away with that
system, the SS-24, or by getting such good verification measures, such as have just come out of
the INF treaty, as to make it no longer a problem.

Interviewer:

TWO MORE QUESTIONS I
THINK ARE ABOUT IT: GORBACHEV GOES TO- I WANT TO ASK YOU ABOUT GORBACHEV. GORBACHEV GOES TO
ENGLAND BEFORE HE BECOMES GENERAL SECRETARY AND HE TAKES ENGLAND BY STORM. MAGGIE THATCHER, A
STRONG PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORTER, AND ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE IS- APPARENTLY, ACCORDING TO PRESS
ACCOUNTS, JUST- PRACTICALLY COURTSHIP TERMS TO DESCRIBE THEIR RELATIONSHIP. THE TWO IT SEEMS TO
ME, PRESIDENT REAGAN AND GORBACHEV BEGIN ENGAGING WHAT IS ALMOST AN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
FOR "MR. NICE GUY" OR "MR. PEACENIK" IN THE LATE 1980S IN WESTERN EUROPE AND TO SOME EXTENT WITH
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. A CONTEST THAT, UP UNTIL RECENTLY, HE SEEMS TO HAVE DONE VERY WELL, AND
MAYBE EVEN TO HAVE WON. I THINK I READ POLLS THAT GORBACHEV WAS CONSIDERED MORE INTERESTED IN
PEACE THAN REAGAN IN WESTERN EUROPE. A COMMENT UPON GORBACHEV ON YOUR PART?

McFarlane:

Gorbachev is in, now,
four years of his stewardship, proven himself, a much different kind of politician. Someone who
is confident that he can co-op the West rather than overpower it. And that our own freedom, in
the media, within a free society, is an instrument that can be used to their advantage. And he
is quite good at it. To his credit, however, I think he is also a man who understands how
dysfunctional the Soviet society's central management is. And as a self-serving politician, he
understands that unless he can do something about that, he won't survive. So he is trying to
alter the way his own system functions, and he is trying to get our help to do it. Well, one way
of getting access to our help, is through good behavior. So good behavior, plus a fairly artful
use of vocabulary, smiling, and not invading new countries like Afghanistan anymore, all combine
to create the image, of what we in the West would like to think Russians are. As I have said, we
have a very romantic view of people everywhere. But he is quite good at exploiting that romantic
vision of the West, and I think requires a far greater dexterity on the part of our own
political leaders. And its not clear that our system is capable of producing that good a
leader.

Interviewer:

FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW,
HISTORIANS ARE WRITING HISTORY BOOKS OF LATE 20TH CENTURY. THE REAGAN YEARS ARE MAYBE A CHAPTER,
AND A VERY SMALL PART OF THAT CHAPTER DEALS WITH THE PRESIDENT'S CONTRIBUTION TO OUR STRATEGIC
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SOVIET UNION IN TERMS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. WHAT WILL THEY SAY HIS
CONTRIBUTION, OR LACK OF CONTRIBUTION HAS BEEN? WHAT WILL THEY- HOW WILL THEY CHARACTERIZE HIS
STEWARDSHIP?

McFarlane:

Well, I think to his
credit, it has to be said, that during his eight years that he did indeed deter. The fact that
he campaigned on a slogan of not having lost one more square inch of territory, is not a cliché.
Its true. We even got some back. Beyond that, I think that he did turn the course of history
away from ever-greater buildup of nuclear weapons, into a downward trend of reducing them. And
that's to his credit. Apart from that I think that a number of things have gone wrong and have
gotten worse. Terrorism. Risk of a collapse of the international financial system, owing to the
great exposure of American banks. Trading system much more in doubt as to whether we can
maintain it in an open way. But on the fundamentals that determine our safety against violence,
that President Reagan has done quite a good job. He deserves credit for it.